Since the intervention in Afghanistan of the Western coalition led by the United States, relations between the West and Pakistan have continued to deteriorate, the latter being regularly accused of playing a double game vis-à-vis the Taliban rebels. The discovery of Osama Bin-Laden's lair in the town of Abbottābād, just a few hundred meters from one of the country's main military academies, has certainly not improved the situation.
As a result of these tensions, the Pakistani authorities sought new allies and new sources for their military equipment. And it was in China that Islamabad found a partner of choice, sharing the same distrust of the Indian adversary.
Since then, military and economic cooperation between the two countries has continued to intensify, to the point that today, China is the country's leading trading partner and its main supplier of defense equipment and technologies. . Thus, the Pakistani Navy recently acquired 4 Type054A frigates from Beijing, while the air force has around a hundred JF-17 fighters, plus fifty currently being delivered, a light single-engine fighter designed with the Chinese AVIC.
In addition, Beijing has integrated Pakistan into its Silk Road project, and since 2018 has had a permanent naval base in the Pakistani port of Gwadar.
But above all, it is the Indo-Pakistani tensions which are at the heart of the rapprochement with Beijing, according to the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The announcement of a future contract relating to the acquisition of 48 MALE dronesChinese Wing Loong 2, capable of carrying up to 12 missiles and guided bombs for 20 hours, echoes the strengthening of the number of Chinese drones observed in the Himalayan zone, and the announcement of the deployment of an electromagnetic rocket launcher system on the Chinese Himalayan plateaus, capable of striking the Indian system in depth.
We can also link the very large number of drones acquired by Pakistan, and the formalization of the order for 5 S-400 systems, each with 48 missiles. We would like to eliminate or saturate the Indian anti-aircraft defense that we would not do otherwise...